KEY POINTS

  • Stripe CEO says departing employees will be treated "as respectfully as possible"
  • Severance pay of 14 weeks and immigration support for visa holders are included
  • Many tech giants are either laying off employees or pausing hiring

Fintech giant Stripe announced Thursday that it will cut 14% of its workforce amid a slew of tech layoffs. While there have been questions as to how companies will support departing employees, Twitter users are praising Stripe for its "quite generous" layoff package.

"We're reducing the size of our team by around 14% and saying goodbye to many talented Stripes in the process," Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said in a note to employees Thursday.

The current layoff round is expected to affect around 1,120 employees, TechCrunch reported.

Collison said the decision was made to allow the company to "match the pace of our investments with the realities around us," alluding to global economic headwinds affecting tech companies. The CEO also said the Dublin-based company "overhired for the world we're in," and that while the departures signify "the hardest change" Stripe has made to date, the company will do its best "to treat everyone leaving as respectfully as possible and to do whatever we can to help."

He went on to provide a list of "some of the core details" included in its employee exit package, which includes 14 weeks of severance pay for every worker leaving the company "and more for those with longer tenure."

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Stripe will still provide departing employees with their annual bonus, as well as unused paid time off. They will also get cash equivalent of six months of their existing healthcare premiums, career support and immigration support for visa holders, the company announced.

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Twitter users have commented on the company's layoff package, with many praising Stripe for the way it is handling layoffs.

One user said the provisions for departing workers are "one of the better layoff packages I've seen."

Another user noted that while Stripe's employees may not have been salvaged from the ongoing widespread tech layoffs, they at least received "some insane severance packages."

Referring to the layoff announcements by some tech companies that did not provide proper details about severance packages, one user said "Stripe just set a standard when it comes to layoff," adding that the exit package "is quiet generous."

Other Twitter users echoed the sentiments of many who pointed out that Stripe was doing a better job in handling layoffs.

Stripe reportedly implemented a smaller round of layoffs in August at its tax compliance startup TaxJar, TechCrunch reported. At the time, 45 to 55 people were affected and some of them were reportedly invited to apply for internal jobs at the company.

Other tech giants that announced layoffs this week were Lyft and Twitter, while Amazon said it paused hiring.

Stripe
Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO at Stripe, delivers a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 24, 2016. REUTERS/Albert Gea